Electornic Submission Instructions

Electronic Submission Instructions


Programming exercises sources should be submitted electronically. The electronic submision process involves:


Here you can find a brief introduction to the jar utility, instructions how to create a jar file of your exercise for electronic submission, and how to use the submit page to submit your exercise electronically. Be sure to go over the checklist before you submit your jar file.

Important: Your submissions will be extracted, compiled and partialy tested by an automatic utility. For this reason it is very important that you  submit the exercise exactly as required. Failure to follow these requirements may cause up to 10 points reduction in your grade and the grading will be delayed.

The jar Utility

jar is a utility that comes with the SDK (like javac and java) that enables you to enclose several files together into a single file -- called a jar file (its action is much like that of a zip utility). You can find detailed description of the options of the jar utility here.

Common use of the Jar Utility

You use the jar utility from the shell window. The jar command should be invoked in the same directory as the files you want to enclose into the jar file.

To create a jar file you type (in the command prompt): 

jar -cvf allfiles.jar *.*
The above example creates a jar file named allfiles.jar that consists of all the files in the current directory and all its subdirectories.

To extract the files from a jar file: 

jar -xvf allfiles.jar
Important Note: Do not give the jar file a name that already exists, as it will run over this file.
           This will happen to you if you forget to name a jar file:
            jar -cvf *.java
            Forgeting to name the jar file in the above example destroies the first jave file.
 

Creating a jar File for Submission

Suppose that you want to submit Ex#3, and suppose the directory containing the program you want to submit is  ~/my_exercises/ex3 .

Remove all files that are not relevant to the submission (all .class files, all .zip files etc.).
Go to the Command Prompt (cmd window or dos window) and change directory to the root directory of the exercise - c:\my_exercises\ex3. In the command prompt window write the following command: 

jar -cvf ex3.jar *.*
This will create the file ex3.jar which encloses all files for the submission and preserve the directory structure. To check that the jar file was created successfuly copy the file into a temporary directory and open it there: 
cd temp

copy c:\my_exercises\ex3\ex3.jar *.* 

jar -xvf ex3.jar
This should extract all the files in ex3.jar into c:\temp, the resulting directory structure should look like the following:

   c:\temp
       3.2
          PerfectPolygon.java
       3.3
          CelsiusToFahrenheit.java
       Meta-inf
          Manifest.mf

Note: Do not pay any attention to the extra Meta-inf directory that was added, it is used for advanced jar options.

Submitting Your jar File

Go to the submit page. Fill in your user name and password. Use the "browse" button to choose your jar file for submitting. Press the "upload the file" to upload the file.

You may upload as many times as you want before the deadline. Uploading after the deadline will be regarded as late submission. The upload utility records the date of the upload. The penalty, if any, for late submission will be calculated according to this date.

Checklist

Be sure that: